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This paper examines the magnitude of urban-rural differentials in infant mortality in England during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and also compares the timing of decline for a selection of towns of varying size, and their immediate rural hinterlands. Most towns continued to experience short-term fluctuations in infant mortality until the very end of the nineteenth century; however, in some of the adjacent rural communities - where levels of infant mortality were much lower - conditions were sufficiently favourable to allow a continuous decline in infant mortality from at least the 1860s, if not before. The final part of the paper considers the causes of these patterns and their implications for explanations of infant mortality decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, which is published in two parts, explores the interrelationships between nuptiality, marital fertility, and migration in Scotland during the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In Part I the pervasiveness and persistence of the differences between demographic experiences in Scotland and England is explored. Though overall fertility was roughly the same, across most of the country nuptiality was significantly lower in Scotland than in England, and marital fertility was markedly higher. Population growth in Scotland was slower mainly because loss of population through migration was so widespread. Within Scotland, regional contrasts were very apparent and these are shown at parish level by maps of population change for 1861-1911, of population loss through migration for 1861-1871, and of lm and lg for years centred on 1881, 1901, and 1911. In Part II of the paper (to be published in the next issue), explanations are offered for these regional differences and also for the marked contrasts between the demographic experiences of England and Scotland in this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second part of this paper we take up some of the issues that were raised in the first, and suggest some explanations for the regularities identified in the pattern of infant- mortality decline. We begin by considering contemporary analyses of the infant- mortality problems especially under the headings of sanitary conditions and maternal care. We also deal with the relationships between fertility decline, improvements in women's education and living standards, and the decline of infant mortality. In the final section we provide an extensive summary and discussion of the whole paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The object of this paper is to assess how far developments in the labour market can help to explain the fluctuations in births which have been recorded in England and Wales between 1952 and 1980. We examine separately the period rate of women from each of the first four parities proceeding to another birth. Our analysis shows that different birth orders respond differently to economic variables, and that women of different ages but the same parity respond differently. We have found that growing real wages for both men and women tend to deter older parents from adding to existing families. During the early stages of family building, births are inhibited by labour markets favourable to women. But conditions in the labour market for men have the opposite effect on early breeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of levels of life expectancy and their patterns of change among six socio-economically differentiated sub-populations of England and Wales for the period 1851-1911. Differences in mortality levels among these sub-groups and their rates of change are analyzed with respect to three groups of explanatory variables, viz., environmental, stratification and demographic variables. Their relative importance for different periods is assessed and discussed. The findings show consistency with two previous studies, which have suggested that medical advances had little effect on the increase in life expectancy during the second half of the nineteenth century. The present paper supports the results of one study in that public health measures affected life expectancies earlier, while subsequently, the increase in standards of living was more important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to two ongoing debates among demographers. One deals with the immediate and deferred health effects of childbearing in the past, and the other with competing explanations--the frailty and insult accumulation hypotheses--for differences in individual health later in life. The study population consists of working women who lived at four locales in England and Wales in parts of the period 1778-1929 and who were under observation for incapacitating sickness during and after their childbearing years. Mothers within the study population are contrasted with a comparison group made up principally of non-mothers. The mothers began their reproductive careers with an advantage in health that was especially evident in the duration of sickness episodes. Even though individual births were less hazardous than individual sicknesses at the same ages, the cumulative effect of childbearing appears to have eroded the mothers' advantage. By ages 50-74 the mothers resembled the comparison group in health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines influences on post-neonatal mortality in Derbyshire (England) in the early twentieth century, by applying multivariate hazard analysis to a rare individual-level data set. The data allow detailed patterns of breastfeeding and weaning to be examined. The role of feeding is given special attention as a mediator between mortality and the other environmental, social, and demographic factors considered. Twins and illegitimate children were more likely to have been hand-fed, but this could explain only a small fraction of their increased vulnerability. Artificial feeding was associated with increased risks of death from diarrhoea, respiratory disease, and wasting diseases, lit is suggested that the link with wasting diseases was predominantly the result of the greater likelihood of congenitally weak children being hand-fed. Most of the variation in post-neonatal mortality, particularly from respiratory disease, was explained by environmental influences -- population density, altitude, and the presence of mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constrained by estimated population totals and observed totals of births and deaths, estimates of age-structures from inverse projection have been widely used in historical demography. Back Projection attempted, by using hypothetical constraints on net- migration, to estimate the population totals as well, and has been used to derive `censuses' for England from 1541 to 1871. A wider formulation, called Generalised Inverse Projection, is proposed in this paper, which replaces back-projection and establishes its relation to Inverse Projection more clearly. Under the same assumptions as back projection, but using the new method, the estimates for England are virtually unchanged. This new method is capable of performing population projections, subject to a wide variety of hypothetical and empirical constraints, for contemporary as well as historical data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with two aspects of long-run fertility trends in England. First detailed and widely comparable fertility measures (Coale's indices) are reconstructed for England from the mid-sixteenth century to the present. Secondly the extent and nature of local and regional variation in those indices is discussed. The calculation of Coale's indices has never previously been attempted for so long a time span. Doing so requires the use of several different sources of information and a new method for combining them. The results provide significant insights into the development of the distinctive English demographic regime. The analysis of spatial patterns makes it apparent that local, rather than regional, variation was the main source of different fertility patterns in the nineteenth century. These patterns are obscured when counties or larger units are made the framework for analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work in population history emphasizes that demographic phenomena should be seen in a wider social and economic context. This perspective is, however, more easily achieved in the case of fertility than of mortality, which is widely treated as a variable `exogenous' to economy and society. In the present paper it is argued that the inclusion of spatial structure and migration in accounts of historical demographic regimes can restore long-term variations in mortality to an `endogenous' position. Within such a model a central role is played by large metropolitan populations, which act as endemic reservoirs of infection, with high but relatively stable levels of mortality. Data from the annual London Bills of Mortality allow empirical testing for the period 1675-1825, with results which generally conform to theoretical expectations, although a substantial reduction in mortality occurs during the latter part of the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the data on occupational and social class mortality published decennially for England and Wales are used to examine the trend in the size of class differentials in mortality from 1921 to 1972 for adult men, married women and infants. Using summary measures which take into account changes in the relative sizes of the social classes over time, it was found that absolute inequality in mortality increased among adult men and married women during the 1950s and 1960s and relative inequality increased for all three groups. Two widely recognized potential sources of error, changes in the occupational composition of the social classes over time, and discrepancies between the numerators and denominators of occupation-specific death rates are examined to determine their effect on the trend indicated, and the initial findings are confirmed. Finally, the possible causes and implications of rising inequality coincident with declining overall levels of mortality, relative affluence, and the uniform availability of basic medical services to all socio-economic sub-groups of the population are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines an interpretation of the modern rise of population based on experience of England and Wales and examines the credibility of this interpretation in the light of the different circumstances which existed in four other European countries: Sweden, France, Ireland and Hungary. It suggests that it is desirable to consider the modern rise of population as a whole, and to examine the post-registration period before turning to the uncertainties of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Using this approach in England and Wales the authors conclude that population growth was not influenced by improved sanitation before about 1870 or by specific medical measures before the introduction of the sulphonamides in 1935. They attribute the rise of population in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to a decline of mortality which resulted from improvement in diet. The grounds for this conclusion are threefold: there was a large increase in food production; none of the alternative explanations is adequate; and in the conditions which existed at the beginning of the eighteenth century improvement in diet was a necessary condition for a prolonged expansion of population. The basis of these assertions is discussed at some length. The data for the four other countries, although less complete, are consistent with this interpretation. There is no reason to believe that medical measures or improved hygiene were elsewhere effective earlier than in England and Wales, and, with some differences in timing, advances in agriculture occurred throughout Europe from the seventeenth century. The fact that the decline of mortality and improvement in food supplies preceded industrialization in Sweden, and probably in Ireland, suggests that the initial phase of population growth was not dependent on it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes some of the main social and demographic characteristics of a Bedfordshire parish in the second half of the eighteenth century. It is based on an analysis of the 'Listing of Inhabitants' of Cardington in 1782, and on the use of the parish registers. The listing does not allow an analysis of the entire population of the parish. Its most serious deficiency is the failure to give sufficient detail for the upper social strata of the parish population, viz, the residents of 'farm tenements' and a small number of other properties likewise poorly documented. In the main, the data given in the article refer only to the residents of 'cottage tenements'. They represent the majority of the parish population, but omit the small group at the top of village society. For the 'cottage tenement' population a number of conclusions are drawn. Within this population there was an overall excess of females over males, but the excess was slight, and the number and proportion of males and females in each age-group balanced quite closely. 43-44% of the population of known age were less than 15 years old, and almost half the population were aged between 16 and 60 years. An analysis of marital status tentatively suggests that adult celibacy was rare. The average number of residents per 'cottage' household was only a little higher than the average size of family, confirming that only a small proportion of households contained more than one family. Household and family size may have been larger among craftsmen than labourers, with the households and families of the former containing more resident offspring than those of the latter. About one in every three marriages was either a broken marriage or a re-marriage. A reconstitution of certain 'cottage tenement' families tentatively suggests an average of over five baptisms per family. Yet there were only two resident offspring per family in 1782. The difference may be explained by the high level of infant and child mortality, with one-third of all baptised children failing to reach the age of is years, and by the high degree of population mobility, albeit over short distances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the reasons for the rapid decline of infant mortality at the very beginning of the twentieth century in England and Wales. It has two main objectives. A detailed demographic analysis of the pattern of infant mortality variation over time and through space is presented by type of environment, and social class. This analysis corrects certain misconceptions about the form of infant mortality decline. In the second part we consider a number of possible causes of the decline and thereby provide a means of evaluating the relative importance of each contributory factor in the light of the demographic analysis. The methods employed are simple and exploratory, since the intention is to lay foundations for future research.

It is known that there have been large declines in the proportion of elderly people living in intergenerational households. Much less is known about trends in the proportion of adult children living with elderly parents. Here I show a large decline between 1981 and 1991 in the proportion of mid-life adults living with an elderly parent or parent-in-law in England and Wales. Declines in co-residence were higher among more advantaged groups so that the characteristics of intergenerational households were less favorable in 1991 than in 1981. Analysis of another data set, including information on the survival of parents, showed that associations between co-variates and co-residence are similar in models applied to all mid-life adults and only to those with a living parent. These changes suggest a continuing trend towards residential independence as a preferred option, with those unable to attain or maintain this coming to represent a more disadvantaged group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on burial seasonality and causes of death in London from 1670-1819. The levels of mortality prevailing in the metropolitan centres of early modern Europe have been the subject of recent debate among demographic historians. The traditional, "naturalistic," treatment of metropolitan demography accords mortality a powerful and independent influence on urban society, but one whose historical evolution is largely restricted to the axis of sanitary reform and whose sole action on the surrounding population is that of a demographic drain. Smallpox appears to have been a universal childhood affliction in the capital and was particularly prevalent during the third quarter of the century when it accounted for ten percent of all recorded burials, but from the 1780s this proportion began to decline substantially and smallpox accounted for only 5.4 per cent of burials in the years 1800-24. The recorded deaths, however, probably understate the full toll of the disease. The term "typhus," was not used until mid-century.

It is informed that many forms of demographic analysis rely on a knowledge of a population's age distribution. The usual source of age distributions is a census. Unfortunately, census age distributions, particularly in currently developing countries or in historical contexts, are notoriously unreliable and often require considerable adjustments. Distortions may occur in several ways. First, completeness of enumeration may vary between different age groups; for example, young children might be missed particularly often. Secondly, incorrect ages may be reported for those who are enumerated. This may be due to digital preference and consistent heaping on ages ending in zero or five, or to broader tendencies to mis-state age, such as the exaggeration of age by the elderly, or a tendency for women in their teens or thirties to report their age as in the twenties. In this article, the authors have used Paul Demeny and Fred Shorter's method, and some modifications of it, to derive estimates of age adjustment coefficients for women in the censuses of 1821 and 1841 to 1931 in England, and to estimate mortality and fertility for the intercensal quinquennia 1841 to 1871.

As a contribution to the debate on the influence of hospitals on mortality rates during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries this article suggests that the hospitals' role may have been underestimated. Part 1 begins with a consideration of the hospitals debate and the source materials available for a series of case studies of provincial hospitals and their patient catchment areas. Environmental conditions and demographic changes in seven provincial towns are examined focusing particularly upon mortality rates and the causes of death in order to gauge the scope for hospital treatment. Each hospital is then examined in turn, the initial conclusion being that the hospitals' physical layout and internal sanitary arrangements were usually planned with care during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Only later, as population pressure on hospital resources grew, resulting in the overcrowding of wards and a rising proportion of serious or acute cases did conditions tend to deteriorate.

The last three decades have seen a vigorous debate over the nature of pre-industrial European demographic conditions and the population changes of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The controversy has been especially hard fought in the case of the English experience. The orthodox wisdom of the 1940s and early 1950s emphasized positive checks, usually in the context of the theory of the demographic transition, with the implication that variations in mortality were the main determinants of population change before and during the demographic revolution. The existence of regional variations in the relative importance of these factors compared with positive checks, lags and imperfections in the equilibrating mechanism and the possibility that fortuitous events may dominate demographic changes in the short term is acknowledged. The underlying determinants of the fertility-real wage relationship are behavioural responses to changes in real wages, and efficacy of family limitation strategies either of contraception within marriage or changes in age at marriage. There is also another potentially more serious problem in the possible existence of association between natural fertility and age at marriage. This could arise, for example, from selective postponement of marriage or by a substantial proportion of shotgun weddings occurring being more likely to be cases of premarital pregnancy.

It is informed that nuptiality may be characterized by its temporal age pattern and by its level as indicated by the proportions of persons who ever marry. The two characteristics are often related in practice, though they are not necessarily interdependent. A computerized system simulating the nuptiality experience of a hypothetical cohort has been developed at the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys with the intention of investigating trends in cohort nuptiality in England and Wales. This system, called GENMAR, has five main programmes dealing with first marriages, the effects of changes in mortality on nuptiality measures, divorce, re-marriage, and marital status distributions. This article summarizes the results of the application of the first programme to data on first marriages of persons under the age of 50 years in England and Wales born in every single year since 1900. The programme starts with a hypothetical cohort of 100,000 persons of either sex in a closed population, and follows them through the nuptial span which is defined as extending from a person's 16th to his 50th birthday. There are two major loops in the main programme: an outer loop increments on sex, while an inner loop increments on year of birth. For any given birth cohort, there are two sub routines: the first constructs a complete gross nuptiality table, and the second calculates an abridged gross nuptiality table.

It is well known that the early official vital registration data for England and Wales are not complete. Estimates are available of the magnitude of under-registration of births for England and Wales as a whole, but it is highly unlikely that under-registration was uniform over all counties. This article presents new estimates of the degree of birth under-registration for each of the 45 constituent registration counties of England and Wales from 1841 to 1910. The method employed involves the technique of reverse projection, using a characteristic model life table, which is defined for each county by its registered childhood mortality. Adjustments are made for the effects of non-stationarity and net migration. The variation in under-registration across counties is shown to be of considerable magnitude, and a particularly interesting pattern of under-registration and over-registration emerges for the counties of the London, England region. In 1841-50, the degree of under-registration in London was very close to that of England and Wales as a whole. The same is the case for 1851-60. However, by 1861-70 the calculated adjustment factor for the county of London indicates an apparent over-registration of births.

This article examines the reasons for the decline of mortality in England and Wales during the nineteenth century. Five diseases or disease groups accounted for almost the whole of the reduction in mortality between 1851-1860 and 1891-1900. In order of their relative importance, the influences responsible for the decline were: rising standard of living, hygienic changes introduced by the sanitary reformers, and favorable trend in the relationship between infectious agent and human host.

This article focuses on local population projections in England and Wales. Population projections are still made frequently, although it is more widely recognised that their predictive value for more than relatively few years ahead is generally low. They can be used to bring out the implications of assumptions about population tendencies, such as the continuance or specified future development of certain rates of fertility, mortality or marriage. The set of 16 projections made for the Royal Commission on Population is largely of this nature. Often, however, they are made for administrative needs, for which a tough figure is better than none and even fairly long-term calculations may be useful as a working basis, for it is usually possible to adapt the resulting decisions later to changes in conditions involving revisions in the projections. The methods employed have been many and various. In the past mathematical curves, such as the logistic, have often been used to project total numbers. Some kind of component method, extrapolating in the first place the elements of population change, is perhaps mote accurate; it is more or less essential if a breakdown by sex and age or other characteristics is needed.

The article evaluates the medical evidence related to demographic transformations in England in the eighteenth century. The evidence supports the conclusion that specific medical measures introduced during the eighteenth century are unlikely to have contributed substantially to a reduction in the death rate. It also suggests that decline in mortality is the main cause of the increase in population than a rise in the birth rate. Eighteenth century saw the expansion of hospital, dispensary and midwifery services; notable changes in medical education; advances in understanding of physiology and morbid anatomy. However it would be wrong to conclude that these changes contributed materially to the health of the people. To arrive at a reliable opinion one must look closely at the work of doctors during the eighteenth century, and enquire whether modern knowledge has contributed to the health of their patients. It is widely believed that a rise in the birth rate was the primary cause of the increase in population during the second half of the eighteenth century.

This article examines the validity of sociologist Gregory King's estimates of the population of England and Wales in 1695 and of its age composition. The estimates are analyzed in the light of the available King's manuscripts. A study of some of the original returns suggests that the population enumerations used by King in constructing his ratios of persons per house, while by no means perfect, were nevertheless reasonable in quality. The account given in the Kashnor manuscript provides some factual basis for King's allocation of houses between London, England the other cities and market towns, and the rest of England and Wales. Demographic ratios for London agree well with those obtained from more extensive contemporary material. For the rest of the nation, such a check is not possible. But analysis of the census returns for England and Wales during the nineteenth century suggests that, at least, the ratios used by King for the other towns and for the villages and hamlets were not unrealistic. How exactly King computed the numbers of towns in his various categories is not known, and the results cannot be tested for reliability until a fresh analysis of hearth-tax statistics has been made.